Istu Awakened

by Robert E Vardeman;Victor Milan

  Tapers were touched to cones of incense. Thick musky smoke rolled into the air, scents and sandalwood and amasinj mingled with the tangy sweet aroma of a Golden Barbarian narcotic herb. Ch'rri the cat woman grabbed a passing serving boy, shoved him down on a stool and climbed astride him, folding her wings protectively about them so that no one quite saw what happened. Ortil Onsulomulo, his golden body naked except for a woman's green scarf wrapped around his neck, dancing in a jig while a clutch of noblewomen of middle years giggled and grabbed at a certain portion of his anatomy. Erimenes pointed out to Osni that Onsulomulo either disproved a certain racial canard pertaining to dwarves or proved the one about Joreans.

  'And so there I was,' explained Fost, warming to his audience, 'in the dark, and that little bastard Rann came at me with his scimitar.' He broke off when he saw the expressions of his listeners. 'What's wrong?'

  'You crossed blades with Rann?' asked Jerru.

  'Twice. Once in the foothills of the Ramparts and again in Athalau.'

  Osni's one eye went round as she asked, 'And you lived?'

  'As far as I know.' Fost started feeling defensive.

  'It seems the rumors don't do you justice, friend,' declared Sirsirai.

  'What do you mean?'

  'Prince Rann Etuul,' said Osni, 'is without question one of the top blademasters alive today. To think you faced him twice, and lived . . .'

  The room started to spin around Fost. He spilled his goblet of wine, then realized he had been steadily draining it, only to have it automatically refilled. He had no idea how much he'd drunk.

  'Excuse me,' he said thickly. 'I've got to get some fresh air.'

  He put Erimenes's satchel on the bench before stumbling away.

  'Never mind him,' said Erimenes. 'He tends to be long-winded, like any hero.' The genie smiled slyly. 'Why don't you take off your clothes and forget all this idle chatter?'

  Fost made his way out into the gardens. He breathed deeply and tried to quell the revolt in his stomach.

  A finger was laid across his lips. He started, turned, saw it was Empress Temalla. She was nude. She took his hand and led him off through the shrubbery maze.

  He followed numbly, fascinated by the way her buttocks moved when she walked. She pulled him into a secluded cubicle and pushed him down into the cool grass. The broad leaves of the shrubbery rustled inches away. Her body shone softly silver in the moonlight as she swung herself astride him and shuffled forward on her knees. The smells of crushed grass and her musk were heady in his nostrils. He took a deep breath and a double handful of her behind and lost himself in the pleasures she offered so freely.

  Moriana sat on the floor with her knees drawn up and her back to a wall. Not even Ziore could pierce the armor of her loneliness. She felt drained, defeated. Sir Tharvus's appearance in the Assembly Hall the day before had destroyed her hopes of fielding an Imperial army against the Hissers. The Empire would react only when the lizard men came swarming across the River Marchant. Then it would be too late.

  She sensed someone over her and looked up into the liquid brown eyes of Emperor Teom. He extended a hand to her. After a slight hesitation, she took it and let him lift her to her feet and lead her out of the Golden Dome. They passed within arm's length of Ensign Cheidro, engaged passionately with an auburn-haired youth. He never looked up.

  As the evening wore on and various participants wore themselves out, some mischance brought Erimenes and Ziore face to face with their jars laying side by side on a table.

  'What are you staring at, you vapid bitch?' Erimenes asked with that special tact he reserved for his fellow Athalar.

  'The man who blighted my life! Whose obscene philosophy deluded me into denying myself all worldly pleasure in favor of a life of serene meditation.' Her face twisted in anguish. 'Meditation! I'd trade a lifetime of it for one hour of passion!'

  'What do you know of passion? Ice water would run in your veins, had you veins!'

  'Bastard!'

  'Bitch!'

  'Asshole!'

  Heads began to turn. Grinning a cat's grin, Ch'rri appeared carrying a bronze waterpipe in a ringed stand. Her tail was held upright, its tip twitching mischievously. She set down her burden next to the two jugs.

  'What game do you play now, darling Ch'rri?' a male voice asked.

  She held up a vial filled with yellow crystals. Delighted gasps rose from the onlookers.

  'Tusoweo,' a man breathed. 'Enough to make a statue of Felarod jump off its pedestal and start buggering tom-cats!'

  The short-haired blonde who had sat by Fost earlier ran up with a clear glass bottle containing aromatic oils. Ch'rri pulled the cork, emptied the bottle and smiled wickedly.

  Ch'rri shook a pinch of the yellow crystalline tusoweo into the waterpipe's bowl. Holding a smouldering incense cone to it, she puffed it alight. A thick yellow cloud welled up. Her slit pupils dilated.

  '- your mother!' Erimenes was saying with malicious precision. 'And your father. Wha -?' Ch'rri picked up his jug and popped home the basalt plug. He disappeared with a dismal squawk of rage. She pulled out the plug again and poured the spirit into the oil bottle.

  'Now, you just wait a minute,' he protested as he spilled like smoke into the new bottle.' Just because this is an orgy doesn't mean you can take indecent liberties with my person! What are you doing? Great Ultimate, you can't pour that hag in here with me!'

  Having plugged and reopened Ziore's jar, the blonde was doing just that. Hissing and spitting like cats, the two genies whirled in a dizzying vortex inside the glass jar, each trying to keep his or her substance discrete from the other's.

  Ch'rri drew in a deep lungful of the yellow aphrodisiac smoke. Leaning forward, she puffed it into the bottle and hurriedly corked it.

  Coughing sounds emerged. For a moment, the spirits were obscured by the thick vapor. Then it was absorbed, and the pink shade and the blue glowed with a new intensity.

  'I say, woman, don't jostle me like that,' said Erimenes. 'I... my word, I felt it. I felt it!'

  'And do you feel this?' Ziore asked in an unspeakably lewd slur.

  His response was a wordless wail of ineffable lust.

  The bottled genies began to spin again. This time they quickly blended into a purple vortex.

  'Ohh!' cried one and 'Ahh!' moaned the other.

  The mutant cat woman's experiment, combining the most powerful aphrodisiac known to sorcery with two highly telepathic spirits, produced spectacular results. A lust so pure and fierce it was almost tangible pulsed from the jar and expanded like the wavefront of an exploding star. Every being it touched went into immediate sexual frenzy. The occupants of the dome yowled as one and went for each other. Out in the streets of High Medurim, pandemonium reigned. Dogs madly humped cats, cats screwed rats. Married couples who hadn't touched each other in years broke bedsteads all over the city. Lonely night watchmen pounding their beats were seized with unaccountable yearnings to pound something else.

  Time passed, to the accompaniment of groans and moans and glad cries.

  In darkness, a traitor's hand opened a hidden door. Masked and muffled figures slipped into the Palace. Steel glinted.

  The door of Emperor Teom's bedchamber burst open. Three men lunged into the room. Stark naked, sitting astride the Emperor and gasping in the throes of passion, Moriana still reacted to the danger. She threw herself clear of Teom, rolling toward the sword-carrying trio, seizing the furs on the bed as she hit the floor. Continuing her roll, she came to her feet and threw the fur pelt into the assassins' faces. It caught two of them by surprise, and they flailed at it as if it were a living attacker. The third sidestepped and lunged at her.

  She grabbed at a tall wrought-iron lampstand and swung. Bones crunched. The man dropped. Oil spilled over him, then the ghastly odor of burning flesh filled the air.

  A second assassin struggled free of the fur and ran at her, sword high. She tossed the lampstand in his face, then wrested the sword from his hand. She disembowe
lled him with his own weapon. The third would-be murderer still struggled on his knees. A single blow split his skull.

  Through the handful of seconds of the savage, silent battle, Teom had sat huddled in his bed, watching, quivering, his face waxy. He silently rose and beat out the flames devouring the first assassin while Moriana shouted for help.

  Fost lay face to face with Temalla while she sleepily twined fingers in his hair. Through a mellow fog of intoxication, satiation and exhaustion, Fost heard a flurry of cries coming from the north wing of the Palace.

  'Istu take it, where're the others?' he heard someone nearby whisper. A soft drumming of feet came and a masked swordsman ran by their little alcove in the shrubs.

  Without thinking, Fost launched himself in a flying tackle. Over they went, the assassin's hooded head crashing into a bush. Desperately, Fost tried to pin the man's sword hand while driving a fist repeatedly into his assailant's body. The man grunted and kicked. His knee caught Fost in the groin. It was a light blow but still set off bright explosions of pain.

  It also sobered him. He groped at the man's belt, found the dagger, used it. The assassin squealed through his mask, then lay still.

  The dead man's sword in his hand. Fost ran to the Golden Dome knowing he couldn't find his way out of this labyrinth in any other direction. He burst through an open archway and sagged against the door frame as a wave of lust hit him like a blow. His flaccid organ stirred and thrust out straight ahead of him like the bow of a ship.

  Ch'rri was on hands and knees in front of him, wings poised above her back, purring like a bass fiddle as a man in black took her from behind. The man's head was covered by a hood. Though the initial irresistible psychic impulse the spirits had sent out had long passed, the sexual energy still crackled in the air.

  Fost wrenched himself away, unlike the assassins in the Dome who had been intent on murdering the celebrants. As Fost ran for the north wing, a suspicion formed in his mind. He had seen the two jugs laying side by side and apparently empty on the table and beside them a squat glass bottle in which a purple whirlwind spun and motes of light danced intolerably bright.

  He reached the north wing. Off to his left he heard shouts and the clash of arms and then the unmistakable booming of Magister Banshau's wrath.

  'Oracle!' he cried to himself, then set off at a run.

  The corridor widened into an antechamber just before the door that led into the laboratory. A hasty barricade of furniture blocked the hallway, a group of hooded killers and Zr'gsz defending it against a squad of Household Guard. The door into the laboratory had been broken down but the Wirixer mage, totally naked and clumsily wielding a paddle used to stir Oracle's nutrient slop, prevented their entry. A low caste Hisser, back broken by a blow from the paddle, lay kicking at his feet like a dog run down by a carriage.

  Even as Fost watched, a Vridzish spearman sank his weapon deep into Banshau's vast belly. The killers swarmed into the laboratory.

  A lithe, naked figure vaulted the barricade, steel flashing in both hands. A Hisser swung on Ensign Cheidro with a mace. With a speed scarcely less than a Zr'gsz's, Cheidro whipped his blades into a defensive cross, caught the mace and sent it spinning away with a deft twist. His rapier licked out and killed the Vridzish. Fost hurtled the barricade, joined the effeminate Life Guard, helping him clear the enemies remaining in the antechamber.

  'You're well named, Longstrider,' Cheidro said in an unruffled nasal drawl. 'That was quite a leap.'

  Fost smiled. Some of the Household Guards, encumbered by heavy armor, had finally struggled over the barrier. They charged into the laboratory.

  The unarmed and untrained sages tending Oracle had died under the Zr'gsz onslaught, but none before impeding the headlong rush for a few brief instants. Their deaths allowed Fost, Cheidro and the Household Guards to burst among the intruders like a bomb.

  Fost sighted Zak'zar and made for him. A black steel sword in hand, the Speaker of the People had engaged one of the Household Guard when three more rushed him, shortswords poised for the kill. He pursed his lips and blew. Black vapor issued forth. The inky cloud swept over the three. They screamed as the flesh festered and fell from their faces in black gangrenous lumps. They collapsed as their bodies rotted inside their armor. The Guardsman Zak'zar duelled gaped in horror. The Speaker hacked him down.

  'Beware the cloud!' cried Fost to the men behind him. Zak'zar turned to Oracle. With a feeling of fatalism, Fost hurled himself at the handsome Vridzish.

  Spitting a curse in his own tongue, Zak'zar swung back to meet the attack.

  'So you've chosen this way to die, Longstrider?' He grinned.

  Zak'zar dodged with impressive speed as Cheidro hacked at him.

  'Perhaps you'll do the dying, friend,' said the young ensign.

  By unspoken consent, Fost and Cheidro separated to attack the Vridzish from two sides. Zak'zar took a cautious step backward. The spur on his left foot found only empty air.

  'You gentlemen have the tactical advantage. Make of it what you may!'

  Fost and Cheidro attacked. In a prolonged contest, a human had the advantage over a Zr'gsz; the lizard men were quicker but lacked staying power. Zak'zar was obviously exceptional in more than his command of man-speech. Fost felt his reactions slowing, though the fury of the Vridzish's defense did not flag. A sudden slash opened a long gash down the left side of his chest, and Fost knew that the fatigue lag in his reflexes and Cheidro's would hand the Zr'gsz both their lives. The Hisser's grin showed he knew too.

  The door to the north side of the room caved inward, riding a yellow fireball. Masked men ran to bar the way, only to fall like grain before a scythe as Foedan of Kolnith hewed his way through using a huge sword.

  Zak'zar's blade slowed to visibility as he glanced toward the flash and thunderclap. Cheidro's rapier pinioned his right shoulder. Tearing the blade free in a welter of blood and a horrid sound of snapping sinew, the Zr'gsz wheeled and sheared through the young ensign's face.

  Reversing the longsword in his claws, he raised his arms into the unprotected swell of Oracle's flank. The hilt of the sword abruptly turned incandescent. Fost heard the sizzle and smelled the stench of frying flesh. With an explosive hiss, Zak'zar dropped the weapon and jumped back. He blew his black breath. Moriana dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

  She made a quick sweep of her fingers and a semicircle of blue flame crackled and roared to the height of a tall man's head. The Zr'gsz was trapped.

  'Have you anything to say before you fry, serpent man?' she called.

  His hair smouldering from the nearness of flames, his right shoulder a torn and gaping ruin, Zak'zar showed sharp teeth in a smile.

  'This round goes to you, Lady. But we shall meet again quite soon, and I believe I can promise a different outcome!'

  'Meet again?' Her fine features showed disbelief. 'Not unless they've integrated Hell!'

  'I'm not due there for quite a while, yet. It may be that you will precede me, unless your pitiful friends manage to defeat the army of the People that even now prepares to cross the River Marchant!'

  The listeners gasped. Fost's face stung with the infernal heat of the flame. He marvelled that Zak'zar endured them so calmly.

  'An army! Where would you get the men?' Moriana asked.

  'Haven't you divined that? It is an army of the Children of Expectation. Since our exile from the City in the Sky, entire generations have grown to adulthood and then entered hibernation in vast crypts beneath Thendrun, waiting for the day we'd meet you in battle. I number myself among them, Your Highness. I have waited six thousand years for the day of final victory.'

  'You won't live to see it!' screamed Moriana. She flung forth her hands. The flames devoured the wall.

  Before the hungry blue tongues reached Zak'zar, the Speaker disappeared. There was a sharp crack! as air rushed to the space he had vacated. Then the only sounds were the disappointed clucking of the flames, and the moans of wounded men.

  CHAPTER F
OURTEEN

  'It seems we've been through this before,' Ziore remarked, looking down at the armies spread out at the foot of the bluff. Moriana had to agree. In many ways, the impending battle shaped up like the conflict at Chanobit Creek.

  Vigorous interrogation of the assassins captured in the Palace revealed a plot laid by Zak'zar in collusion with the Guilds of the High Medurim - and Gyras, late advisor to Emperor Teom. The hunchback had been intercepted riding along the coast road that led to North Keep. After undergoing suitably painful torments, the dwarf was impaled as an object lesson for others.

  Had Teom been with a Medurimin woman trained from birth in helplessness instead of Moriana, or had the dozen assailants infiltrating the Golden Dome not succumbed to the libidinous emanations from Erimenes's and Ziore's coupling, High Medurim would now be dominated by the Fallen Ones. Ten days after that night of lust and slaughter, Fost still had nightmares. One image in particular haunted him. Exhausted and bloodied, he had been helped back into the Golden Dome. He saw Ch'rri the winged cat woman kneeling above the body of her erstwhile lover licking the blood from her whiskers and paws. In good feline fashion, she had taken her pleasure from the lust-crazed assassin, then ripped him to pieces.

  Badly shaken, Teom had named Fost a Marshal of the Emperor and given orders to march for the River Marchant. In two days, the Imperial Army issued forth from the high walls of Medurim, winding in a mile-long serpentine of trudging foot soldiers, baggage wagons and proud war dogs stepping out beneath armored riders. Temalla was left behind to cope with the administrative tangle ensuing from the attempted coup. Not the least of her problems was cleaning up after rioting had broken out the night of the attack when the Watch had attempted to arrest over seven thousand Medurimin for fornicating in the streets in violation of the traffic code.

  As rapid as Imperial response had been, it had not come quickly enough to prevent the Vridzish from pouring across the Marchant and laying waste to half the Black March. Like locusts the Zr'gsz devoured everything edible in their path, including human inhabitants who didn't flee in time. Unlike locusts, what they couldn't consume they put to the torch.